From the moment he entered the White House, President Obama’s attitude towards the crime, corruption and politicization of the Bush Justice Department has been to “look forward and not backwards.” As we’ve seen for the third time in just the last several days, that’s working out just fine for the Bush lawyers.

On Wednesday, prosecutor Nora Dannehy [assigned by Gonzales’ successor Michael Mukasey] announced she would bring no charges against Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Monica Goodling or any of the key players behind the purge of 9 U.S. attorneys.

That slap on the wrist for the Bush legal team followed another this week. Scott Bloch, the disgraced Bush DOJ lawyer convicted for withholding information from Congress about files that he ordered be erased from office computers, will likely be given probation. While ethics advocates like Debra Katz of the Government Accountability Project argued probation for Bloch “understates the true scope and impact” of his crimes and “would represent a miscarriage of justice,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Leon apparently had no issue with it […]

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While Scott Bloch for now is still practicing law, Bush torture team architect Jay Bybee sits as a judge on a federal court. Among other things, Bybee, as you’ll recall, affixed his name to the August 2002 memo largely authored by Office Legal Counsel rubber stamp John Yoo, a document which proclaimed that torture “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”

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As for Alberto Gonzales, his lawyer George Terwilliger said his critics “owe him an apology.” Gonzales, whose comical selective amnesia under Congressional questioning included the classic, “Senator, that I don’t recall remembering,” like Bybee has only one regret. As he acknowledged to Esquire in December, Gonzales’ real lament about the U.S. attorney firings is that the Bush White House wasn’t political enough. After the Republican losses in the 2006 midterm elections, Gonzales suggested, the Bush administration’s error was that it simply couldn’t get away it:

“We should have abandoned the idea of removing the U. S. attorneys once the Democrats took the Senate. Because at that point we could really not count on Republicans to cut off investigations or help us at all with investigations. […]

Democrats don’t do impeachment. Never have. The closest they ever got was with Nixon, and that only worked because the Republicans turned against Tricky Dick. Notice that Nixon resigned before impeachment ever got to the House floor.

On the other hand, impeachment has always been the GOP’s weapon against Democratic presidents they don’t like. The very first Republican-dominated Congress–the original Radical Republicans–faced with a Democratic President, Andrew Johnson, impeached him. He missed being removed from office by one vote. We all know what the next group of “Radical Republicans” did to Clinton. I’m sure the even more radical group in Congress now will do the same against Obama should the GOP gain a majority after this election.

I suspect that one day Obama will look back in regret at this action. His advisers tell him to take the road of political expediency and to not look like he’s being vindictive so that he can get things done and be electable for a second term. In the meantime, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our history takes place and it sets the precedent for future Executive disregard for our laws. In historical hindsight, the invasion of Iraq, the torture and rendition of prisoners and the politicization of our Justice Department will be a shameful stain similar to the Palmer raids, the HUAC and other excesses in our government.

For shame to all of those who do not consider this one of the worst offenses ever committed against our country and the constitution.

“Tragically, everybody in a position to object to these shenanigans failed to issue any warnings or ring the alarm bells – and this includes the entire matrix of adult authority in banking, government (including the law), academia, and a hapless news media. Everyone pretended that the orgy of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt and loan obligations, structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations, and other chimeras of capital amounted to things of real value.

Certainly the editors and pundits in the media simply didn’t understand the rackets they undertook to report. You can bet that the players on Wall Street made every effort to mystify the media with arcane language, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. (Making multiple billions of dollars by trading worthless certificates based on getting something for nothing must be the ultimate definition of succeeding beyond one’s wildest dreams.) It’s harder to account for the dimness of the news media. I doubt they were in on the caper. More likely there is a correlation between their low pay and their low capacity. But I wouldn’t discount the fog of assumptions and expectations about the way the world is supposed to work that can disable even people of intelligence.

I’m as certain as the day is long that the folks on Wall Street, from the myrmidons in the trading pits to the demigods like John Thain, with his thousand-dollar trash basket, knew that they were trafficking in tainted paper. Many of them deserve to be locked up in the federal penitentiary for years on end, and they probably never will because president Barack Obama lacked the courage to set the dogs of justice after them and now it is too late.”

i don’t know if it’s his advisers or if he made the decision on his own. he’s the one always talking about looking forward and not back. it really doesn’t matter, because the buck stops with him. you’d think a constitutional scholar would have more respect for the law. he keeps kowtowing to the rethugs. meanwhile, batshit bachmann has already declared that the rethugs should do nothing but have investigations if the rethugs win the house. darrell issa is just waiting to pounce on every single action the administration takes.